Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The all Darwyn Cooke (deceased) thread

I can't find my copies of Wolverine & Doop.

And I thought I owned a HC copy of Selina's Big Score.

I just ordered his just-released Twilight Children TPB from Vertigo. It's currently available at In-Stock Trades for just $7.49. I was always gonna get it after it was released, but the timing was extraordinary. I don't know if anyone here read the series, and I never saw any reviews. In any case it seems a steal for the price (the individual issues were all extra-sized and cost $4.99 a pop!) and knowing it is graced with his art.

Re: Twilight Children - I read the first issue and decided to wait for the trade. Classic Cooke artwork, but the story seemed to get off to a slow start.

Loved Twilight Children! Very oddball and offbeat story, which is clearly the doing of Hernandez's sensibilities, but still really fun. Darwyn's work is magnificent as always, and he gives the sleepy Mexican town a lot of character, and when needed, 'pop'.

I still have a backlog of some Cooke stuff I own but haven't yet read. Specifically, I have Spirit Vol. 2 and the Batman: Ego and Other Tales TPB (which includes Selina's Big Score). So with the addition of Twilight Children, I'll have a bit of a Darwyn Cooke fix that's "new to me". Plus, New Frontier is really do for a personal re-read.

Any of you who never checked out Darwyn's four adaptations of Richard Stark's Parker are missing out! I think they are my personal favorite works of his that I've read. But then, I love me some noir, so that is a big reason.

I am checking them out of my library. At least the ones they have. Picking up Slayground, Selina's Big Score, and Trail of the Catwoman tonight

Personally, I think Slayground is the weakest of the Parker adaptations, possibly because it's the only one of the four that isn't book-length (there's a backup story). But that's far from an indictment--it's still really good!

I still have the last Parker novel to get and read and I can't wait. I agree they are seminal work of his. I also love noir and these are just about as good as anything ever done in any medium.

I also still have Ego & Other stories to get, and then a handful or random issues here and there to complete my collection of all his stuff (think a random X-Force issue and the Wolverine / Doop mini). It's kind of nice to have a "new to me" pile of Cooke stuff, like you mention!

I've been feeling down about his passing. So maybe a reread of New Frontier (for like the 7th time :)) is in order for me too.

When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I really couldn't think of anything (which is normal for me). And then it occurred to me what the perfect gift would be: a TPB by Darwyn. And so, among 2 other OGNs I'll get around to reading and reviewing eventually, she got me Ego and Other Stories, which I couldn't wait to devour in January.

As expected, I absolutely loved it. Classic Cooke from start to finish, it was wonderful to see his focus purely on Batman, Catwoman and that section of the DCU. It was also nice to get a sense of these stories within Cooke's own publishing chronology, to see him make the shift to superhero stories, to getting comfortable with Selena and then shifting over to Batman and then to eventually get really creative and stylistic.

All of the smaller, back-up stories were wonderful. But the main two stories, Ego & Selina's Big Score, were tremendous. Ego might not be in the top 5 Cooke stories of all time, but I'd buy a Batman story of that caliber any day of the week and thought it was a great insight into Bruce Wayne--very much in the vein of the animated series and yet also so Cooke. Selina's Big Score, on the other hand, was truly fantastic from start to finish, and was a fantastic crime story that foreshadowed Cooke's Parker stories, while also letting him give Selina some nice shine.

This was kind of a personal buy for me. Over a year ago, I was really started to feel not just disheartened by comics, but almost bitter. As if rather than giving me any joy at all, they were causing me the opposite. It's hard to explain why I felt that way. I know following various comic book creators on twitter only left me disliking most of them rather than getting excited about their work--the complete opposite effect it was supposed to have. Before DC Rebirth, I had totally given up on both DC and Marvel and my total devotion to Image and the independents had grown cold. And then my Uncle, who was as critical to my love of comics as my father was--reading old issues of the Fantastic Four to me when I was still 6 or 7--passed away in Autumn 2015 after 15 years of alcoholism. Though he did make peace with my Dad, and be extension, the rest of the family, it was a heavy blow that at first didn't seem that way and crept up on me over a period of months. Then came Dev and Lash passing away. And then, even though it was a creator and not someone I knew, I felt like Cooke's death was yet another personal blow to me. He was my favorite living comic book creator, and just someone whose art made me still think comic books mattered. I really was upset when he died, and I'm sure it was also mourning Lash and Dev and my Uncle, but I thought about just quitting reading comics.

Luckily I didn't. Through some miracle, DC's Rebirth got it right, got my father to start reading comics again after a 20+ year absence and then got me to start reading them again. By Christmas time, when my wife asked me what I wanted, I thought it was a good choice--I felt I owed it to myself to include some Darwyn Cooke work that I hadn't read within this new found love and enthusiasm for comics. I'm glad I did. It was a highly fulfilling read.

There's a few other random Cooke stories I don't own and haven't read, and I plan to get them all. But slowly. I like knowing there is still more to go.

Today was not a good day for me. After holding my demons at bay for months, they struck back with a vengeance this morning. And you know what turned out to be the tonic I needed to pull myself back together?

Re-reading The New Frontier.

I am grateful to the higher powers above that there are still a few rare gems in my superhero comics collection that can both renew my faith in the genre and lift my spirits.

And if any of you haven't yet read Cooke's afterword in the New Frontier Volume 2 trade, I recommend searching for it. I just did a search, but couldn't find it on the web. Hopefully someone else will have better luck.

Gods bless your soul, Mr. Cooke.

Yeah, I unequivocally love that book.

I need to track down a lot of the other stuff discussed in this thread that I've never read.

Just read that Afterword in my own copy and yeah it is great. May the spirit of true heroes never die.

I have the Black Label edition of New Frontier on loan from the library. Coming in at more than 500 pages, it's got deleted scenes, creator commentary (originally done for an earlier edition before Cooke's passing,) sketches, promotional material...everything but the kitchen sink! Highly recommended!

Sounds super-awesome!

Must have! Got the original 2 volumes, but this edition has so many extras, it's hard to resist.

I did get the "Martini Edition" of Parker, which does have some cool extras but not as much as that New Frontier. It's oversized and sort of fits nowhere on the shelf, but great for breaking out the Herb Alpert music and drifting into the '60s.

Cramey, count me in as another Herb Alpert fan!